TV Tuner

St. Thomas (the school I am going to) is nice and gives you cable for free (this makes me very happy ). So I was talking to my roommate about a TV. He doesn't have a TV and the only TV I have is like a 13" TV so I thought that I would just use my monitor as a TV. It will save space and be actually bigger than the TV that I could bring.

I don't really want to buy an all in wonder video card because I don't want to spend that much money on this. Trying to keep it under $100. My question is what should I buy and how does it work? I was looking at something like this, but am completely open to suggestions. Thanks guys.

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Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network

Although I can't find it on newegg anymore... I got a TV tuner made by asus for $30.00 and it works great. Came with a virtual vcr program too.

Try finding these for sale:

http://usa.asus.com/prog/p_search.as...tuner&langs=09

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"I can travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom." ~Dwight K. Schrute

Hauppauge makes one of the best home use TV tuners out there.

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Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

Buy the Hauppauge my brother has one made by them, works great, picture is awesome as well.

I remember reading in pcworld a got a while back and they did a few page article of tv tuners, they recommended Hauppauge or ATI.

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Noob

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815116306

the TV wonder from ATI is pretty good for its price. it comes with a remote too.

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Spike

As I was looking through some of these I thought of another question...how does HDTV play into all of this? If I bought...say...this card could I watch HDTV on my monitor?

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Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network

Yes, though of course you will need access to HDTV broadcast. You would also need access to HDTV cable / cable box.

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Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

Help me through my HDTV stupidity here...

Almost all stations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area are HD compatible/ready (major networks, anyway). So I don't have to worry about that. Access to digital cable I am not sure about, though. Is there such a thing as "regular" cable and HDTV cable? So what I am trying to say...on "regular" cable could I get HDTV if I had a HD compatable TV? Hope that makes sense. I never really did understand the whole HDTV thing.

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Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network

Digital, regular cable and HDTV cable travel over the same type of cable, at different frequencies (I believe). You can watch HDTV on your monitor but you'd need a TV that was able to output the signal unless of course you downgraded the signal, but if you did that, what would be the point in having HDTV?

All major stations simulcast HDTV, but your local stations (CBS, NBC, etc) have to broadcast it as well. Where I live, that is not yet available.

So basically if you want HDTV you either need to subscribe via Cable or Satellite or be in an area where your local stations broadcast HDTV.

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Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

Okay...after a lot more research I found that it would be possible do the HDTV thing because there are about 10 stations that broadcast in HDTV within 9 miles of St. Thomas. The problem is that A). I would probably have to have a big "on top of your roof" anntena, which wouldn't work so well. B). I don't want to spend $140 on a TV Tuner because I don't know how much TV I plan to watch and in the future (after college) I don't think I will be watching very much TV on my monitor.

So I am thinking of going with the Hauppauge. I am also glad that my old 80 gigabyte hard drive died and I got a new 160 gigabye drive because I have been reading that at the highest quality (12MBits/sec) you are recording at 5.4 Gigabytes/Hour.

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Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network